Today, a fascinating – and infuriating – case study in how Men’s Rights Activists twist reality around in order to fit their peculiar ideology. Obviously, they do this all the time, but it’s hard to find a clearer example of the MRA Reality Distortion field in action than the video I’ve pasted in below from A Voice for Men.
The video features a recording of one of AVFM’s regular commenters calling a domestic violence hotline, pretending to be a man named “Reno” who has been abused by his wife. In reality, Reno is Ian Williams, a puckish Australian who has made himself AVFM’s go-to guy for prank calls; you can find several other prank calls from him on his AVFM contributor page.
Here’s what Williams, who also goes by the pseudonym Dr. F, has to say about the call:
If you’re a man and you are a victim of violence from your partner you may face difficulties finding help. Don’t listen to me, here’s the guy himself who called. His name is Reno.
Reno calls a battered women’s shelter and is denied help.
He is denied help, even though he tells the person on the other end of the phone that he is worried his wife will return with a cricket bat.
That sounds pretty damning, and, in the comments, the regulars at AVFM responded with predictable outrage.
“No concern for a beaten man or a boy that could also be a victim and, only able to help(willing) women,” wrote Raven01. “It makes the hate filled ideology apparent to all.”
“[Go] feminism- the humanitarian justice movement brought to you by the modern KKK!” Perseus added. “Sieg Heil, cunts!”
Not one of them seemed to care that everything Williams says about the phone call is false. “Reno” was offered help many times. He was the one who refused it.
If you listen to the call, here’s what you’ll find:
Williams, pretending to be “Reno,” called a Domestic Violence counseling line, not a battered women’s shelter. He told the counselor he’d been attacked by his wife and that he needed a place to go. The counselor explained to him that he’d called a counseling line and that she personally couldn’t arrange for shelter, but that if he called the men’s help line, they could arrange for him and his 6-year-old son to get free hotel accommodations at a location unknown to his wife. The counselor offered several times to connect him directly to the men’s help line.
Williams also told the counselor that he was thinking of calling the police. She told him she could connect him directly to the police, and would be happy to explain his situation to them and to make sure he reached an officer who specializes in domestic violence.
Ignoring all her offers to assist him in getting shelter and further help, Williams insisted that he wanted to be housed in a battered woman’s shelter instead. The counselor, naturally, was puzzled by this strange insistence on his part, and explained to him again that he could get free shelter at a local hotel for as long as he needed. She again offered to connect him directly to someone who could get him immediate help.
Having refused all of her offers of assistance, Reno abruptly ended the call — to the obvious distress of the counselor, who despite the patent weirdness of his behavior on the call had been patiently trying her best to get “Reno” the help he claimed he needed. (I suspect she sensed that his story was phony, but tried to help anyway in case it was true.)
Listen to the call yourself. It’s utterly surreal. What’s even more surreal is that Williams would make the bald claim that he had been “denied help” — and then put up a recording that clearly reveals that this claim is complete and utter bullshit. And I can’t tell if he’s lying or delusional.
That’s always the question with MRAs, isn’t it?
EDITED TO ADD: A commenter here has prepared a rough transcript of the call. There are a few moments where it was impossible to figure out a word or two, but otherwise this seems to pretty accurately match my memory of the call, which I’ve listened to several times. Let me know if I need to make any corrections.
Recorded message:
Family Violence Counseling Line. Please note for training and quality improvement purposes only, your call may be monitored. If you do not want your call to be monitored, please let the counselor know. If you wish to listen to ? regarding our privacy policy if you are already speaking to a counselor press one now, otherwise hold on the line for next available counselor.
[Ringing sound]
Counselor: Hello, this is *redacted* speaking, how can I help you?
“Reno”: Oh, hello. I um, was speaking to someone a short while ago called Maria,
Counselor: Uh huh…
“Reno”: And, and my name is Reno. And, um…
Counselor: Uh huh…
“Reno”: I was explaining, I was explaining to her that my, my wife, uh, is violent towards me with a cricket bat and other things.
Counselor: Mmhmm…
“Reno”: And, uh, she gave me a phone number to call, and uh…
Counselor: Mmhmm…
“Reno”: I called them and um…
Counselor: A phone number for what?
“Reno”: Uh… Uh, it was to help, it was a, um… Pardon me, it was 1-800-015-188. It was a…
Counselor: I don’t know what that number is, so what is it for?
“Reno”: Uh, it’s a helpli-, it’s a possible, it’s a place where they might be able to tell me where I can get some shelter for the night. But there’s none of the… DV places ? are gonna help me, because I’m a man, you see.
Counselor: Have you called the men’s line? ‘Cause they’re the ones who specialize in, because in Australia unfortunately most of the, um… Services. Well not unfortunately, fortunately though, most of the services are for women, because 95% of domestic violence is perpetrated by men. So that’s why they don’t really have um… They don’t really have… So many refuges for wom-, for men. They do have places where men can go, but they’re normally um, like overnight men’s, um, places, like… Which state are you in?
“Reno”: Victoria.
Counselor: Victoria. I don’t know the ones in Victoria but there’s quite a few, for example, in Sydney um, that provide um, overnight accommodation but they don’t call them refuges as such because um… It’s the different situation only for women ’cause often they’re, well normally they’re fleeing with children. So um, normally the men’s ones aren’t, they’re not called refuges, they’re called like, a men’s hostel or an overnight, um, men’s overnight um, shelter, or they’ll call them different names but they don’t call them refuges. So, um, if you’re looking for men’s refuge that’s probably not in existence, but there are a lot of men’s shelters.
“Reno”: Will they take me and my boy?
Counselor: If you’ve got a child, um, they’ll probably prioritize you, I would say. Um, have you rung men’s line? Because they’re the ones who really have this type of information, um because they specialize in helping men. While general lines, like, we’re a counseling line, so we don’t actually have access to phone numbers for, um, directly for refuges. We can connect you to the refuge line. How old’s your, how old’s your son?
“Reno”: Six.
Counselor: How old?
“Reno”: He’s six.
Counselor: He’s six. And where is he right now?
“Reno”: He’s with me. My wife’s gonna be coming home in about three hours, and she’s gonna, she’s gonna beat me.
Counselor: And he, and your son’s not asleep now?
“Reno”: No, he’s with me now.
Counselor: Why isn’t he in bed at 8.40, 8.48 in the-… Sorry Reno, but why is he awake at this time of night?
“Reno”: Because we’re about to just go somewhere, anywhere, out of the house because we just… We’re terrifed. He, we’re ready to go, so. We, we’re ready to go.
Counselor: Reno, this is really concerning me. Is he listening to you as you’re speaking on the phone?
“Reno”: No.
Counselor: Where is he right now?
“Reno”: He’s got some headphones on. He’s watching…
Counselor: What’s he doing?
“Reno”: He’s watching television now, he can’t hear any talk. I made sure of that.
Counselor: Yeah, I’m really concerned that he’s um, awake at this time of night. Um, the other organization that could most likely help you find accommodation and probably would be your best option would be ? Community Services, because they deal especially with children and families in crisis, and so they would definitely keep you together, they would probably actually put you in, normally they pay for a hotel or motel. A men’s shelter wouldn’t be the appropriate place to go with a child, definitely not. So, um, ? they give you, they have a lot of motels and hotels that they deal with, and put they in those instead of accommodation until they can find you permanent accommodation.
“Reno”: Okay.
Counselor: Like, normally they’d pay for a flat or something instead, they wouldnt, they don’t continue to keep you in a, you know, holding pattern in a hotel. Sometimes they make you stay for, like, two weeks in a hotel.
“Reno”: Mm.
Counselor: That would be a good option for you, wouldn’t it?
“Reno”: Yeah. And they wouldn’t let my wife know that, where I’m living? Staying?
Counselor: No, they wouldn’t do that.
“Reno”: ‘Cause she’s really violent. Really violent.
Counselor: They definitely wouldn’t. Um, they definitely wouldn’t let your wife know where you’re staying. I can help you with the phone call. I can introduce you, explain the situation, and see what they can do for you, if you’d like.
“Reno”: Hmm… Possibly, tha-, thank you. I think I might, actually what I might do is call the police now and then see how it goes in there.
Counselor: But your best option is calling the police and then asking to speak to a domestic violence officer.
“Reno”: Okay.
Counselor: They’re the ones that are the most specialized in this, so they deal with this day in and day out, and that’s probably stationed… Are you in area, in an open area? Are you in Melbourne, or are you in a town, or…?
“Reno”: Uh, I’m in Melbourne.
Counselor: Well, if you’re in Melbourne, most Melbourne police stations will have a domestic violence officer, and they specialize in domestic violence, and um, what you can get is to get a detective to come over, or a domestic violence officer, and say that you’d like to um, that you have um, fear of, um, harm of your wife who’s been abusing you. And what they’ll do is, they might um, even try and get an AVO so that she has to move out of the house and you guys can stay in the house.
“Reno”: Mm.
Counselor: They’ll try probably to do that so that you and the child can stay there. Or um, if you move, they’ll um, it would be, that she can’t actually have legal contact with you.
“Reno”: Yeah… No, we have to actually get away from her, we can’t stay here. So there’s nowh-, there’s no um, women’s shelter I could stay in, we could stay in tonight?
Counselor: Well, women’s, women’s shelter’s don’t take men.
“Reno”: They don’t take men.
Counselor: Why don’t you ring men’s lines? They would be able to tell you where you can go. Why don’t you ring the men’s line? Do you want me to connect you through to the men’s line? They deal with men. Men and women’s shelters are two totally different issues. Why do you want to go [to] a women’s shelter?
“Reno”: I just need somewhere where I can just get away from her, somewhere whe-
Counselor: Yeah, but why wouldn’t you, why wouldn’t you wanna go? Why aren’t you accepting this offer that ? will pay for hotel accommodations for you and your son?
“Reno”: Oh, because I…
Counselor: Why do you…
“Reno: Because I need to get out now.
Counselor: Yeah, but they would organize it now, they’ll probably organize someone to come and get you now. People work 24/7.
“Reno”: Oh, okay. I didn’t know what. Okay.
Counselor: ? Services work 24/7, or do you want me to put you through to your local um, police station and explain it to the domestic violence officer so that I can introduce you and explain your situation and see how they can help you?
“Reno”: No, I’ll, I’ll give them a call myself. Okay, thanks.
Counselor: Are you sure?
“Reno”: Absolutely.
Counselor: I’m happy to do it, Reno. I’m very concerned about your son.
“Reno”: No, that, that’s okay. I, I’ll go now.
It’s not supposed to fun! If you’re not miserable, how do you know you’re in church????? O.o
(this is one of those things my old preacher said sometimes in a jokey tone, but the punchline was that it isn’t a joke at all)
The people katz linked too definitely had the whole “fun is Satanic” thing going on.
I’m not going to accept that Atheism and Atheism+ has a oppositional issues similar to fundamentalists and moderates. I am dogmatically opposed to that notion, because the implications are a little absurd to me. And if you think so, you’re messing up my purity of doctrine.
Bit of a sarcasm and joke there, but it’s a dangerous tightrope to walk. There’s a rather significant difference in the way the things work.
—
It’s easier to grasp that the Alien is wrong than it is to understand why people who are like you are yet, somehow, not. If it’s an alien or an atheist, they’re wrong because that’s what they *are*. It’s an inherent attribute of the notion. If it’s a fellow believer who is wrong about doctrine, opposed to yours, they must be willfully defying God, the proper Path, everything. It’s not just part of their being, it’s something they choose to do.
Think about that. What’s worse? Someone being Evil because they can’t help it, or someone choosing, out of their own will, to do Evil?
And I haven’t found any system of thought that likes willful subordination. So @Howard Bannister, is spot on.
Makes “Them” look bad, infringes on doctrine, forces contrast that shouldn’t exist.
Hm, correction – self. “Rather significant difference in the way things work in sorting out differences. Will of God versus “Your issues are not significant enough to warrant thought””
Don’t know why that cropped out? Sorry! Sorry.
Obviously I’m talking out of my ass here, but this is more what I would have thought (although, obviously, there are many factors and a great deal of variance from person to person). Fundamentalism doesn’t just teach a belief set, it also teaches a way of thinking and acting about your beliefs. So even if you abandon those beliefs for others, you may still retain some of those attitudes and behaviors.
Pretty much every religious group I’ve ever been around interprets “the will of God” to mean “stuff that I, personally, want, and everyone else can go fuck themselves”. So pretty similar, really.
Watching fundamentalists speak is always proof of how easy it is to make any religious text mean whatever you want it to mean.
@ katz
I do get a sense of missionary zeal from some atheists who’re former fundies.
Freshly out to convert the world to the proper rational doctrine. Their will carried on the holy trinity of Empiricism, Scorn and Sufficient Statistical Analysis.
By the way, I mean that the leadership of every religious group I’ve been around selectively interprets the texts to support their own viewpoints. The individual believers I know have mostly been moderate and entirely reasonable people. And that can work in positive as well as negative ways – there’s plenty of support in most religious texts for the idea that your primary religious duty is charity or compassion towards others, so fundamentally nice people pick out that stuff and ignore all the stuff about smiting the unbelievers.
The smugness certainly does carry over in some cases.
On atheism:
I know of many atheists throughout my life. The women were not as militant as the guys. They are tolerant (or at least, appear to be) of most other belief systems and do not try to get in an argument and prove how wrong you are. Of course, there are gender roles and expectations at play. But I don’t know if this is seen more often than not.
There seems to be more assholishness from guys in any belief system, really. I think it’s how they’re raised, to be assertive (read: aggressive) about everything.
Gendered socialization – men are brought up to believe that it’s perfectly reasonable for them to talk over and down to other people, especially women.
@Cassandra: there’s also a societal expectation about women being the spiritual gatekeepers–that is, women are judged more harshly than men for not getting the kids to church. (just a small part of the whole expected-to-raise-the-kids expectations)
In polls women are more likely to continue going to church after they stop believing, which points to a whole bunch of other expectations interlocking with that.
A new commenter called D has prepared a transcript of the call; it seems to be pretty accurate, and I’ve added it to the post.
Also, D, big thanks!
AH! I totally forgot about the spiritual gatekeeper-thing. I know Marge Simpson had to drag her family out to church once a week, but me and lots of my friends never really went to church a whole lot. I went to private religious schools, but never did anything religious outside of that. I guess it’s also a regional thing? I know my social groups think a lot of religion is malarkey,
D, that’s awesome that you did that. And welcome!
Also, don’t underestimate, in complementarian circles, how completely church can dominate a woman’s social life.
Also, don’t underestimate how much labor costs churches are able to save by having their female members “donate” their time and talents as stewardship. Any other organization would have to pay them wages.
@cassandrasays
Omg, a chance for me to ramble about myself! XD (commences rambling)
I grew up as a greek orthodox christian. I’m not an atheist though, just agnostic. Idk if there’s a difference? But my main stance is ‘don’t know if there is a god/gods’ but if there is I hope they’re nice. I’d actually like to go back to church, just cuz I have good feels from it from child hood, but my current one (that I *technically* don’t go to any more but my dad does) is all homophobic and slut-shamey. 🙁
*Disagrees* I mean, I’ve been bored in church before, but usually not miserable. Just grimace inducy due to the homophobia/ slut shaming I just mentioned.
Everything I’d say that’s relevant has been said, but yes, smells like cows. There’s a barn “next door” (as in a few hundred feet up the road)…the pasture’s right up to the yard. Idk how people live this far from society, the grocery store’s a hour away!
Otoh, there’s a cat on my lap!
Welp, a couple friends of mine just proceeded to totally misrepresent evolution in a texting conversation with me.
They’re highly religious (big surprise) and I’ve kind of played along, suggesting that if they want awesome new features they should modify their bodies and then their children will inherit the new features.
What this has taught me is that they can’t tell Lamarckism from evolution.
I feel like I should tell them that they’ve got the wrong idea, but I don’t want to start an argument (aside from the fact that, y’know, friends, it would be a total waste of time) and I don’t want to stay totally silent because they seem to sincerely believe what they think about evolution.
Which is, in a nutshell, speciation occurs when a male of a new species manages to find a female of a new species and reproduce.
Religious background – my father’s an on-again, off-again Methodist lay preacher. My mother’s a long-since-lapsed Catholic. The religious side of things had pretty much evaporated by the time I was aware of anything, and I don’t think I ever went to church as a child. There were silly RI classes at one of my primary schools, but they only amounted to Bible stories with pictures. I would say I’m culturally Christian in the sense of it being the default state of Australia, and my personal background, but apart from the vague sense of “behave because you’re being watched” I didn’t grow up religious, let alone fervent. As an adult, the notion of the Biblical god got too conflated with the Calvinist/fundamentalist distortion of the idea, with no knowledge of how many other ways there are to conceptualise it. (My interest in religion was purely because of its role in French and English 17th century history.) I couldn’t believe in such a being, let alone worship it, and was agnostic, or atheist in the sense of the afterlife being too much to hope for.
In the brief period I looked at atheist/sceptic publications, I was put off by the things everyone’s already mentioned: missionary fervour and male asshattery. I found even blogs like Greta Christina’s extremely irritating. Of course they’re US blogs dealing with the US situation where fundies have disproportionate influence – or at least, very loud voices – but they pissed me off with the sweeping condemnations of anyone-not-atheist-enough, even though I agreed with the criticism of much about organised religion.
There isn’t really a good word for my current beliefs. Deity plays a minimal part in them. I’m not wild about calling myself a deist, because from what I’ve read of it, it seems terribly dry, and I’m not interested in the intellectual pursuit of defining God, or whatever. Spiritualism brings up images of bloody Helena Blavatsky and warble about reincarnation, both of which irk me no end.
Cassandra – re religious groups interpreting the word of God to be what they want:
The word of God is cats.
That is all.
I wonder if the lady on the line was wondering why he specifically wants to go to a women’s shelter. Especially since according to his story he’s being violently abused *by* a woman.
A local historical figure whose exact name I can’t recall at the moment was known for establishing a battered women’s shelter, especially for women who immigrated from other countries. Angry men would gather around the building demanding their wives be returned. I wonder if something similar to this happens to women’s shelters today, with men trying to get access to them to track someone down, or whatever other reason.